Dr Wortberg and Dr De Palmenaer have worked on the development of polyethylene-based carbon fibres as part of their doctorate at the ITA. Within the framework of their dissertations, it was possible to reduce the cost of carbon fibres drastically, which goes far beyond existing research efforts.

Apart from that, the ITA project leader Dr Markus Beckers was awarded with the Paul Schlack-Honorary Prize 2017 for the project “Development and analysis of a new manufacturing process for polymer optical fibres (POF)”.